Exhale #21: I got some strange the other night

I got some strange the other night.

After we checked into our hotel room, we grabbed a drink. As we sipped our drinks we talked about what we were about to do. We talked about both of our desires.

I felt a little nervous, a little excited.

We went up to the room, lit some candles and turned on a good playlist.

I told her to lie on the bed. I put my hands firmly on her shoulders and told her to breathe deeply, to feel herself sinking into the bed.

I told her, “You can let go. You don’t have to do a thing. I’ve got it.”

Over the next hour we had one of the best sexual experiences I’ve had in a long time.

I’ve been with my wife, Adee, for over 6 years now, and that night with her still felt like I was “getting some strange.”

“Getting some strange”, sleeping with a new person, was the ultimate goal as an adolescent and young man.

The novelty, adventure, and excitement of being with someone new is something that anyone that has had sex has experienced. It is an incredible feeling for men and women alike.

While I will probably always have some desire to sleep with new women (because I’m a slightly evolved chimp and it’s natural), I’ve found that I can fulfill that desire for novelty in a different way: By intentionally co-creating new experiences with my wife.

By continuing to court her, date her, surprise and delight her, by talking about our fantasies together that don’t involve other partners and fulfilling those fantasies for and with each other.

The strange mindset

Adee and I are fortunate that we’ve always had chemistry. We’ve always had a lot of physical attraction and great sex.

Yet I still expected that years into our marriage our sex life would become boring and seldom because I heard that that was just what happened in marriages.

I can honestly say that 6 years in I am having the best sex of my life.

The most important factor in our ability to have such a good sex life is simply the belief that it’s possible.

We chose to challenge the common narrative, and we’ve proven to ourselves that it’s possible.

Starting with that belief, the next most important thing is to be intentional.

That means we plan ahead, we talk about what we want and don’t want, we reflect on how things are going and how we can improve regularly. We also intentionally try new things on a regular basis. Because there is nothing that kills that “strange” feeling like familiarity and repetition.

Belief, then intention.

One of the things we are intentional about is learning things we can take into the bedroom.

We’ve learned things like:

• BDSM from Om Rupani

  • I also read the book, I am a Dominant

• Tantra from Laurie Handlers

• Kinky stuff from Kimi Inch

• Combining things like breathwork, dance, and other things with sex from Jamie Wheal

  • This podcast and this podcast (beware they are “out there”)

We’ve also learned that there are a lot of things we could do outside of the bedroom that would increase our polarity, our magnetism, our desire for each other like:

• Getting space from each other regularly. The times I feel the most amount of desire for Adee is when I come home from being away for even a weekend. Since having a kid this is tougher, but we still find times to get space even if it is less often than we are used to.

• When we do date nights, we always get dressed up. Because we’re still trying to look good for each other.

• We don’t have to be “in the mood” to just start having sex, and sex absolutely does not have to be spontaneous to be amazing. We are crystal clear about the fact that 5-10 minutes into it, we’re always down. Sometimes it’s like how we pretend to be asleep before we actually fall asleep. When we aren’t super horny and pumped about sex, we still go through the motions, being as present as possible, knowing that we’ll be into it shortly.

• Also things like traveling, doing fun new things around Austin, etc.

What strange can look like

Here’s an example of an experience we created a few years ago.

I told Adee that in a few days we were going out and that I would plan everything.

That day came. It was a Tuesday afternoon. I left our house to go to the hotel to prepare.

At 4pm, a deliveryman knocked on the door of our house and delivered Adee some flowers and a note from me.

She opened the note, and it said something about the first time we had sex, some dirty talk and directions to the next note I had laid out in the house.

My notes took her around the house, each with a different story or a few sentences of dirty talk.

The final one was in our closet.

It said, “A car will pick you up at 5. I want you to wear a classy, but very sexy dress. It should be long. You’ve been a bad girl, and tonight you’re going to pay for it. Do not make the driver (it was an Uber) wait… unless you want to be punished further. When you get to the hotel, there will be a key waiting for you at the front desk. Get it and come up to the room immediately.“

We had talked a lot about her loving me talking to her like that. She consented!

When I got to the hotel I set everything up and just waited. At 5:20 I turned on some music and hid in the closet to wait for her.

She opened the door and found the note I had left for her. It told her to take her clothes off, to put on the blindfold and handcuffs.

I left the closet and started talking to her, slowly and deliberately… and then you know what happened. I got some strange. WE got some strange.

Adee and I are so far from perfect when it comes to sex.

We go through periods of not having as much sex as either of us want and times where we are lazy, don’t put much effort into it and have mediocre sex. We also go through periods of conflict where the last thing we want to do is fuck each other.

But we do a lot of things well, and it’s working.

In this way, we are playing together. We try new things and try what sounds fun and exciting.
All of this makes us love our lives more as well as our relationship. So it’s about more than sex. It’s about our relationship health in general. It’s also about personally maintaining a feeling of vitality, freedom and aliveness.

Belief, Intention, Learning, Playing > getting some strange.

7 Day Strange Challenge

Adee came up to me the other day and said, “Wanna try having sex every day for a week?” “Uhhh yes please.“

We did it (we missed one day*), and it was great.

We tried something new almost every day. Some days were 20 minutes. Some days an hour if we had time. I highly recommend this as a way to start or to continue injecting novelty into your sex life.

*One thing worth mentioning is that we missed the one day because we were in conflict that day. We resolved that conflict better than we had in our entire relationship, and it has a lot to do with us just having more and better sex.